Blair harboured hopes of top EU job amid Brown turmoil, says Campbell

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/29/blair-harboured-hopes-of-top-eu-job-amid-brown-turmoil-campbell

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Tony Blair was sounding out the possibility of becoming president of the European commission three years before he stood down as prime minister, his former spin doctor Alastair Campbell has claimed.

In the latest instalment of his diaries, Campbell also says that Blair decided to walk away from No 10 in 2004 because of the tension with Gordon Brown. Blair eventually stood down in 2007.

Campbell, who left his post as communications director in 2003, reveals that Blair asked him to consider returning in order to mastermind a campaign to secure the European job.

Various soundings were made among other European politicians, including Ireland’s then prime minister, Bertie Ahern, and France’s minister of the interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, both of whom were sympathetic. The French president, Jacques Chirac, was not in favour, however.

In the end, nothing came of the venture, writes Campbell in his new book, Outside, Inside, 2003-2005, due to be published next week. But political journalists will be riveted by the confirmation of the bitter relationship at the time between Blair and Brown.

Campbell says: “A lot of the time the press exaggerated our difficulties. This was one period where if anything they underplayed them because they didn’t know just how bad things were.

“This was the closest Tony got to leaving and at the time I was terrified it would get out because it was one of those stories that would have taken on its own momentum.

“Tony had pretty much had enough and was being ground down by Gordon. In the end he realised that and decided he had to stay and see it through.”

In 2007, after he had quit as prime minister, there was speculation that Blair was angling for a different European post, as president of the European council. Brown was reported to have supported the idea. But there was opposition to Blair’s potential candidacy from the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

The fifth volume of Campbell’s diaries, published by Biteback, are to be serialised in the New European newspaper.

Biteback’s managing director, Iain Dale, says: “Alastair’s new diaries offer an incredible insight into an extraordinary period of political history.”